Last year, a renowned Los Angeles fertility doctor was visited by a French couple so desperate to have a child they forked over a $200,000 fee.

Little did the doctor know the couple was an aging brother and sister hoping to have a child so they could thwart distant cousins from inheriting their mother’s $3.8 million fortune.

Jeanine Salomone, 62, and her brother Robert, 52, had the child last month.

The baby, carried by Jeanine, was the product of an American woman’s egg fertilized by Robert’s sperm.

The American woman, who has been identified only as Deborah, also gave birth to a child that was the product of Robert’s sperm.

The doctor from the Pacific Fertility Clinic in L.A. admits a background check was not conducted on the siblings. If there had been one, he now says, he would not have performed the procedure.

“I would never have carried out these fertilizations if I had known they were brother and sister,” said clinic director Dr. Vicken Sahakian.

“I was duped. Jeanine told me Robert was her husband, and they both had the same surname, so I wasn’t going to demand to see their wedding certificate.”

The French siblings are both unmarried and live with their 80-year-old mother in a small village on the Riviera.

Their mother, who made her fortune in property development, has stipulated in her will that unless the siblings had children of their own, her money would go to relatives.

Although the siblings’ actions have been hammered as “disgusting,” Jeanine, a retired schoolteacher, is unapologetic.

“I have done nothing wrong, and have nothing on my conscience,” she told the French newspaper Le Parisien.

“I may be 62 and my brother 52, but we are in a better position to bring up children than a couple of drug addicts with a kid on welfare.”

What she doesn’t mention is that her brother is mentally handicapped and tried to blow his brains out in 1992. His botched suicide removed most of his face, leaving him hideously disfigured.

Because the fertilized eggs implanted in Jeanine were from another woman, Sahakian said, technically the births are not considered incest.

Both Jeanine and Deborah delivered their in-vitro infants last month.

Jeanine had a boy who was named Benoit-David; Deborah had a girl who was named Marie-Cecile.

The newborns are now living as brother and sister with the sibling schemers.

Many fertility experts consider the situation positively chilling.

Dr. Jamie Grifo, director of NYU’s reproductive unit and a crusader for tough rules and enforcement for in-vitro fertilization, said the Salomones have opened a Pandora’s box of ethical contradictions.

“I have a lot of problems with this,” he said, adding, “We would not have treated them.”

He said his clinic requires marriage licenses and birth certificates from all patients – and would have turned the Salomones away after seeing theirs.

They would have been turned away because of age, too, he said.

The NYU clinic also requires that all in-vitro candidates be evaluated by a clinical psychologist – and someone with Robert Salomone’s background and mental capacities would be considered high-risk, he added.

On an Internet forum for older mothers, the reaction to the siblings’ actions is one of horror.

“I don’t believe it’s ethical,” said one mature mom, stressing that it was Jeanine’s motive “to keep an inheritance,” not her age, that bothered her.

“I fear for those children’s future,” she wrote. “The money aspect gives rise to a lot of questions about her character.”